Couldn’t hurt, on any day, given some worrisome trends in Canada – though less here than in Europe – to demonize both Jews and Israel, particularly via the rubric of anti-Zionism, which anybody with half a brain recognizes for what it is: The same old anti-Semitism tarted up in sleazy pedantic finery.
But yesterday, at the Beth Emeth Bais Yehuda synagogue in North York, the most astonishing thing happened. Leaders of Canada’s political parties got all gushy and goopy, practically falling over one another to show they love Jews – and Israel – best.
How gratifying this must have been for those assembled, and a wider constituency that has found itself besieged anew, bewildered and alarmed by the increasing brazenness of Jew-bashing in this country, a toxic debate that finds fertile soil in the political sludge of the Middle East.
There was Prime Minister Stephen Harper using the occasion to announce a new bill that would allow victims to sue perpetrators and sponsors of terrorism – whether individuals, organizations or foreign states – through Canadian courts, civilly.
And there was Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff, sounding rather ticked that the Tories had thus pre-empted a private member’s bill on that very issue, which justice critic Irwin Cotler had planned to introduce in the Commons.
Jack Layton had no such bill in his back pocket – perhaps left it in his other pants – but was adamant that New Democrats stood four-square with the Canadian Jewish Congress as human-rights advocates, whilst denying that new-wave anti-Semitism is a phenomenon of the modern left.
The Green party’s Elizabeth May extolled Israel as “an exemplar of democracy” in the Middle East, while claiming violence in the region is fuelled by “petro-dollars to petro-dictators.” The Bloc called in sick and was excused.
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